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Published on 7/23/08
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It isn’t Radiohead letting listeners decide how much to pay, and it sure as hell isn’t a band giving it away for free on a MySpace page, but the CSO still took a smart and principled choice in its own way in its first download-only release. Not only is it of a popular work, the kind that tends to sell best in the iTunes world, but it’s an interpretation and performance that pretty much everyone will want to hear.
First off, you’ve got a biting trumpet section that’s really locked in and committed, flute solos from Mathieu Dufour that can’t be heard anywhere else and the massive sonorities of the strings in Shostakovich’s heart-rending slow movement. The percussion section also sounds as if the microphones were up against the drumheads; this recording really thunders.
Then there’s Chung’s interpretation to recommend. It’s a tight and focused reading that really keeps a chamber-music feel to some passages, like the frequent duets in the woodwinds. Chung ramps up the creepy factor at the end of the first movement in a way that hasn’t been heard often, in a burned-out dialogue between violinist Robert Chen, trumpeter Chris Martin and Mary Sauer’s chiming celesta. The finale blazes.
The download is available at iTunes and comes with cover art and a seven-page booklet with a fine essay.
